Genre-flexing Journal Announces Chapbook Winner, Upcoming Contest

DIAGRAM, an online magazine of text and art, has announced the winner of its 2009 Chapbook Contest, which was open to manuscripts of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and mixed-genre writing. Benjamin Mirov, a poet and editor of the online journal Pax Americana from New York City, won for his collection I Is to Vorticism. Mirov’s Ghost Machine was also a finalist for the one-thousand-dollar award, which includes publication by New Michigan Press.

The finalists are:
Lucy Anderton for The Sinister Juice (poetry)
Douglas Basford for Gull Hymns (poetry)
Franklin Bruno for All That Is Solid Melts in Your Mouth (poetry)
William Carty for Quarry (poetry)
Justin Dodd for An Extravagant Fever (poetry)
Patrick Ryan Frank for A Compact Guide to Modern Fears (poetry)
Loren Goodman for New Products (poetry)
Boris Jardine for Resistance (poetry)
Heather Kirn for Psalms of Unknowing (poetry)Sara Levine for Misgivings (fiction)
JoAnna Novak for Something Real (fiction)
J. Robinson, for Strap On Aesthete (mixed genre)
Jennifer Tamayo for Keloid (mixed genre) Mark Yakich for Pornocracies (poetry)Jake Adam York for The Lamps Are Never Out (poetry)

The majority of entries fell into the category of poetry—ninety-five percent, according to DIAGRAM editor Ander Monson’s estimation—but the journal hopes to see more prose and multigenre chapbook submissions in the future, Monson said. The next deadline for the contest is April 30, 2010.

The journal is currently running its annual Hybrid Essay Contest for pieces that incorporate innovative textual and visual elements or writing in genres besides creative nonfiction. The winning work will be published in DIAGRAM and the writer or writers—essays by multiple authors are accepted—will receive one thousand dollars. Finalists’ pieces will also be considered for publication.

So what kind of work is the journal seeking? "We still don't know exactly what we mean by hybrid, and we would certainly prefer to leave definitions up to you. We don't like them," say the submission guidelines on the journal’s Web site. "We're looking for essays that are in some way outside the traditional boundaries of the genre. The lyric essay is a great example of a hybrid form: an essay that is essay but also poem. So we're looking for fusion of one sort or another. In particular we'd like to see work with greater visual components, or perhaps audio, or something that will amaze and beguile us."

Hybrid writers can submit essays of ten thousand words or fewer with a fifteen dollar entry fee, either using DIAGRAM’s electronic submission system or via mail, by October 31. Ander Monson and Nicole Walker will judge.